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So Sweet & Sour came out when I was 10. I watched every episode and loved it. The most important thing I learned from it was that when they tried to teach Fulvio from Rafferty’s Rules to play, the mantra is that anyone can play bass. I took that lesson into my years of writing about music, working for record companies and being in shit art rock bands. Watching that first episode again thirty years later on the you tubes I noticed quite a lovely Greeks living in inner suburban Australia theme going. I can’t remember that but I do remember migrant stories on TV seemed so prominent back then. Also the music director was Martin Armiger from The Sports. He’s done quite a bit of soundtrack stuff since and now teaches at AFTRS. Maybe he’d be a good interview subject one day. http://bit.ly/17Nl2EU Oh yeah, they were right on Sweet & Sour. Anyone can play bass. Even me. It’s easy. All you need is the guitarist to tell you which bits you have to put your fingers on.

Sorry to disappoint, I haven’t been tracking when Josh has been pretentious. Just when he’s been wrong….

Thanks for pointing me to Sweet and Sour, which I never watched as a kid but I got the theme tune by osmosis. I’m loving it, between the glory of Arky Michael’s dancing in the opening credits, the musician cameos, and that shade of orange that only seems to have existed in furniture of the period, it’s great fun. And as someone who was an occasional visitor to Sydney in the 80s, it’s great to play “spot the thing that existed then” – in the first episode alone, you’ve got the separate roomed train carriage, and the layout of Sydney Central railway station (I’m pretty sure Renee Geyer and Tracey Mann hang out next to the bookshop that was there – I’m a bookshop fiend)

I loved Sweet and Sour so hard when I was a kid. My best friend and I used to record ourselves singing (loose term for what we did) Takeaway songs onto a cassette. I splattered water paint on material and made my Barbies asymmetrical dresses like what the girls in the band wore. I still get squealy whenever I see Arky Michaels. I really want John and Josh to do a Live in the Studio at ACMI about Sweet and Sour and get some of the writers and actors to appear.
Also, loved In the Flesh. I think you did a good job explaining why people should watch it without giving anything key away.

Thanks for the Sweet & Sour review, I laughed and sung along whilst doing my shopping (with many odd looks coming my way!). The thing I remember most about it was my massive crush on Arkie Michaels…what a spunk 😉

Everybody was on fine form this week. Very nearly swerved into oncoming traffic after Brett’s Thatcher comment, and then again at his callback. The zinger ratio was high. Unless I’ve once again misunderstood how ratios work, in which case it was actually low. Whichever one means lots of zingers.

Regarding YouTube copyright claims against Sweet & Sour, it’s possible that there is no malicious intent here. There’s an automated system that immediately locates a song and puts a claim up. (Which I discovered back when I’d upload Bazura clips to YouTube, and before they’d been set to “public”, they had already been identified as breaching copyrights, even if most of the time we couldn’t identify exactly which bit they thought we were misusing. They may have changed the system now. There appears to be some new deal set up in which the record company then gets revenue from the ads that play before the clips, as well as a credit in the Info section. So that deleted Sweet & Sour may have been uploaded before this new system took effect.

That said, everything I’ve said is anecdotal and conjecture-based, so if someone who actually knows how YouTube works wants to correct all the things I’ve just said, that would be great.

I know John said that you probably have to have been born before the airdate of Sweet & Sour to appreciate it, but I was alright, because I’ve always assumed that the 80s were set to a backing saxophone chorus. As far as I’m concerned, this is a documentary.